The private sector arm of the UK’s aid programme is failing to demonstrate adequately how its investments improve the lives of the world’s poorest, according to the state spending watchdog, even as the government plans to ramp up the funds it channels through the body.

AidEx, the second-biggest event in the development calendar in Brussels, opens today (16 November), for 48 hours, in which the international aid community, NGOs, professionals come together to share experiences and expertise.

Concerns that Donald Trump will dramatically cut US aid spending and oversee a withdrawal from global development have sent shockwaves through NGOs and others who fear what the impact of his presidency will be on the world’s largest donor of international humanitarian and development funding.

France's Solidarity Tax on air travel is a major source of funding for health programmes in the world's poorest countries. But Paris auditors have said it unfairly penalises Air France. EURACTIV France reports.

Ali Bongo was sworn in Tuesday (27 September) as Gabon's president in a ceremony boycotted by many African heads of state, after the country's top court controversially validated his fiercely contested election win.

More than a quarter of UK overseas aid will be spent by ministries other than the Department for International Development (DfiD) by 2019/20 - according to figures that have sparked renewed concern about changes to Britain’s aid policy.

The new minister in charge of Britain’s overseas aid budget faced criticism on her first appearance before a Commons committee when she was unable to come up with a figure for the amount of aid that was being “wasted and stolen” – after publicly highlighting it as a significant problem.

Too much of Britain’s aid money is wasted, stolen or spent on inappropriate projects, the new minister overseeing the UK aid budget has declared, as she served notice of plans to take an approach based on “core Conservative principles”.

The world’s poorest countries could lose more than €378m per year if their existing trade agreements with the UK market are not maintained in the event of Brexit, a new series of essays published by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and the UK Trade Policy Observatory has warned.

Faced with many challenges, from migration to terrorism, the EU and its Mediterranean partners must cooperate with pragmatism and variable geometry, the Secretary General of the Union for the Mediterranean, Fathallah Sijilmassi, said.

Mediterranean countries have vowed to accelerate implementation of the commitments struck in the Paris agreement last December and push forward a number of national and transnational initiatives to combat global warming, ahead of the end-of-the-year climate summit in Marrakesh.